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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

How to Craft the Ultimate Page Turner

By: Patrick Hester

Hi there! My name is Patrick Hester. I’m a PPW member, have
taught at Write Brains and PPWC, and volunteer as a board member for Pikes Peak
Writers. I’m also an author, leaning toward science fiction and fantasy, though
I have dabbled in all sorts of fiction. I have a critique partner named JT
Evans. You might know him as both a contributor to this blog, and as President
of Pikes Peak Writers. One of the kind things he and others have said to me
numerous times is how well I do scene and chapter breaks. That means a lot to
me, because I work hard on them. I want my readers to turn the page and keep
reading, not take a break.

The secret to doing that well? The answer might surprise
you.

Two of my favorite things: comic books and Classic Doctor
Who.

Now, I know that some of you are rolling your eyes and
grabbing for your mouse to close the browser window. I’m gonna encourage you to
stick around. Even if comic books and Doctor Who aren’t your thing, I assure
you these two things are not as strange as they may seem on the surface. And the lessons they teach can impact your
writing and ability to hook your readers and keep them engaged. And isn’t that
what it’s all about?

One of the most popular forms of storytelling is the serial,
which utilizes cliffhangers to keep the reader, or watcher, coming back for
more. Comic books and Classic Doctor Who both used this structure quite well,
and instilled in me and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of fans
worldwide, the same sense of wonder, excitement and anticipation at what will
come next. Will the Doctor and Sarah Jane escape the Daleks this time, or is it
all over? How will Spider-Man manage to beat Doc Ock and pay his rent on time?

Okay, I admit the second one is a little odd, but that was
part of the fun. Allow me to delve a little deeper into this and bring it
around to your writing.

Comic books have a formula to them. So do Classic Doctor Who
episodes—the stuff before the recent relaunch under Russell T. Davies.

But let’s stick with comics for a moment. The page of a
comic book is designed to guide you through the story, panel by panel, and make
you turn the page. Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about.

Now, comic book pages have become quite sophisticated
through the years, but the premise is still the same. Pages are split into
‘panels’. The lower right hand corner of the page is: The Hook. Some question is
asked here, some action is taken, maybe a fight begins, or an explosion, or
someone ‘off screen’ suddenly says something. It’s such a hook the reader must
turn the page to see what happens next.

Which brings us to the upper left hand corner of the page:
The Reveal. This is the resolution of whatever happened in that last panel on
the previous page. It’s the reward for having turned the page, and it satisfies
readers, justifies their attention and the fact they kept going. And it
restarts the cycle for the new page.

If you’ve ever read a comic book, you’ll notice that the
last page almost always ends on such a hook—an unanswered question, a surprise
attack or mystery of some sort. All intended to bring readers back in a month
to see what happened, learn the truth and keep moving forward.

Let’s put it into context for the fiction writer, because
it’s a powerful tool for us to have.

What makes for a good scene break or chapter end? When some
writers start out, they see chapters as having a beginning, middle and end— a
resolution. That’s not horrible, but if your chapters end in resolution without
asking new questions or revealing new dangers, you’re giving your reader an out
and an ending. They can now stop reading, take a break, grab food, watch TV,
scratch the cat behind the ear, hug the significant other across the shoulder, or maybe walk the
dog.

That’s not what you want to happen. You want the cat to be singing
its mournful song, the significant other to feel abandoned, and the dog to
leave a ‘surprise’ on the kitchen floor, all because your readers couldn’t tear
their eyes away from your story, your book.

Think about the last book you read that you simply couldn’t
put down. The one that drove you nuts. Every free, waking moment of your day,
you longed to spend with your nose planted between those sweet-smelling pages.
When you couldn’t do that, couldn’t read it, you were fidgety and anxious. Kept
finding your mind wandering back to the story, the characters, and where you
left them— precariously balanced on the edge between life and death, happiness
and despair. And when you were reading it, and came to the end of a chapter,
you took a breath, turned the page and told yourself, “Just one more chapter
and then I’ll stop.” Only you didn’t stop. You kept going.

Why? What was it about that book that made it impossible to
put down?

Most likely, it was some form of what I describe above.
Which can also be called ‘beats’. The author used them and played you like a
virtuoso, pulsing at just the right times, luring you in and keeping you so
focused that anything short of continuing on was unacceptable.

That’s powerful writing, and you are just as capable of it
as that author you were reading. Understanding how the author did it is half the
battle. Translating that understanding to your own writing means breaking it
down. Like with the page of a comic book.

Let’s be honest. You can’t design the pages of your book the
same way you can a comic. It won’t work. Or, it could work, but your publisher
would hate you because it would involve a lot of complicated layout, design and
probably some PhD level math. Instead, think about the structure of your book
as a whole, see how it flows, how the sections and chapters break the way you
have it now, and how they could break with a little tweak.

Think of your story as a self-contained serial where each
chapter feeds into the next. Like Classic Doctor Who.

See? I told you’d I’d tie all of this together.

Classic Doctor Who was an oddity on American Television full
of half-hour sitcoms and one hour dramas. Broadcast on PBS (mostly), an
‘episode’ of Doctor Who had its own formula, broken into parts similar to
the acts of a play. The episode itself might be 60-90 minutes or more, but
split into 20-25 minute acts, each with a cliffhanger ending and an opening
resolution. They went something like this:

•The Doctor and his companion arrive on a planet.

•There’s something wrong with the TARDIS
requiring them to spend some time here.

•They begin to explore.

•They encounter the locals, and get split up.

•One or both discover there’s more to this place
than they originally thought, and something isn’t quite right.

•Suddenly, either the Doctor, or his companion’s
life is in jeopardy!

•Queue music.

Trust me, as soon as the music started, you were up and out
of your seat shouting, “No” because you knew you’d have to wait to see what
happens next. In the UK, that meant a week. In the US? You’d have to wait
through a pledge drive bit and then they’d get on with the next part of the
episode. Not horrible, unless you absolutely couldn’t wait to see what happens
next.

And there it is. That reaction we want as writers. Getting
it is as simple, and difficult, as applying the idea of the cliffhanger to your
writing.

To get the reader to keep going when the chapter ends, raise
the tension and the stakes for the characters. If you’ve just resolved
something, drop in the next thing on the list of crap that’s happening, or
about to happen to them. They got out of the haunted forest and to the house on
the hill, but that house isn’t the haven of safety they thought it was… They
stopped the bomb from blowing up Air Force One, but something is still beeping…
The hero ran the villain through with the great sword and, spinning, lopped off
his head, which is still talking from its perch on the throne…

Learning to play with these beats and rhythms starts by
emulating what you’ve read and seen in your own writing. Remember that book I
mentioned above? The one you couldn’t put down? Why couldn’t you put it down?
What did that author do, and how can you apply it to your own writing? Analyze
and adapt.

For me, I almost always have some sort of cliffhanger at the
end of my chapters, large or small (sometimes you have to let your readers take
a breath. A short one) so they can turn the page and say, “Just one more chapter…”

About the Author:Patrick
Hester is an author, blogger and 2013 Hugo Award Winner for Best Fanzine
(Editor - SF Signal), and 2014 Hugo Award Winner for Best Fancast. He lives in
Colorado, writes science fiction and fantasy, and can usually be found hanging
out on his Twitter
feed. His debut novel, SAMANTHA KANE:
INTO THE FIRE is forthcoming from WordFire Press. His short fiction can be
found in the anthologies Space Battles: Full-Throttle Space
Tales #6 andAn
Uncommon Collection, as well as the eBooks Conversations
with my Cat, Witchcraft & Satyrs,
Consumption, Cahill's Homecoming (Cord Cahill Serials Book 1) and Cahill's Unfinished Business (Cord
Cahill Serials Book 2). His Functional Nerds and SF Signal weekly
podcasts have both been nominated for Parsec awards, and the SF Signal podcast
was nominated for a 2012, 2013, and 2014 Hugo Award. He writes a twice-monthly column for
the Kirkus Reviews blog, for his own site atfmb.com, SF Signal (now closed) and Functional Nerds.

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